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Counting on You

By Chris Lydgate ’90 on June 24, 2014 12:27 PM

Art major Maria Maita-Keppeler '14 came up with this T-shirt design for Reedies for Reedies, a student group that raises scholarship funds for an incoming freshman.
Maria Maita-Keppeler '14

We’re in the final stretch.

Six days left in the fiscal year. Six days for the Annual Fund to reach its goal.

From time to time, alumni ask me what the Annual Fund actually supports. My answer: basically everything.

In the last year, for example, the Annual Fund helped Reed:

• welcome 356 new students to campus• open a new Performing Arts Building• hire 9 new professors from Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Cornell, and Stanford, among others• license 22 students as nuclear reactor operators• crown 321 scholars with thesis laurels

The Annual Fund’s dollar goal is an ambitious $4,084,000, a whopping number that is hard to wrap your head around. Just as important, however, is the goal for participation: 4,400 donors, out of a total pool of roughly 15,000 living alumni.

Last time I checked, 3,905 alumni had made a gift to Reed this year—which means we need just 495 to step up.

There are as many reasons to give as there are entries in the Catalogue of Ships. Because of our professors. Because of the generosity of those who made it possible for us to go to Reed. Because we want to make Reed accessible to students who couldn’t otherwise afford it. Because of what Prof. Gail Kelly once said. Because of the Laffer Curve, poikilothermia, the Great Vowel Shift, and Simone de Bouvoir.

Whatever your reason, make a gift by June 30. Big or small, sumptuous or Spartan, each gift makes a difference to the education that Reed is able to provide, year in and year out. Each gift sends a powerful message to our brilliant, creative, passionate, self-questioning students: that you believe in Reed’s educational mission— and that you believe in them.